Early Years service

This privacy notice explains what personal information is collected, what it is used for and who it is provided to. The notice also describes why the Council requires your data, and the legal basis on which it does this.

This privacy notice relates to the Council’s Early Years service. It provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular service, and should be read together with our general privacy notice.

This service uses personal information about you, such as your name, address, date of birth, telephone number(s) and email address(es).
In order to provide our service and match you and your family with the best support for your particular needs, we also need to collect some information about you which is more sensitive (known as special category personal information’). This may include information about you and your child(ren)’s:

• gender
• ethnicity
• language
• nationality
• religion
• country of birth
• NHS number
• GP details
• Health Visitor details
• education details
• social care status
• active claims for Universal Credit, Disability Living Allowance etc

The Council uses your personal data for the following reasons:

• to promote the services we provide - if we have links with a service which we think would help you and your family.
• to match you with our services, to refer you to a service, and to provide the service(s) to you and your family.
• to check how our services are doing, and whether they are having a positive impact - this may include getting feedback from you.
• to keep our records and accounts up to date, so we can track what support we have provided and to who.
• to process childcare funding
• to generate statistics about who uses our services. This helps us make decisions such as where to use our resources to ensure each of our services reach the people who need them and are as effective as possible.

We collect and use this information under Article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’).

In order to provide our voluntary service, we need to collect, use and share personal information about you, so we can understand you and your family's strengths and needs, and refer you to the right support services. We will ask for your express consent to do this. (Art 6(1)(a) of the GDPR).

You have the right to withdraw your consent for us to use personal information about you at any time. However, we may not be able to provide this service without your consent (e.g. to send a referral with your personal information to a support service).

For some services we may need to collect, use and share special category personal information about you, so we can refer you to the right support services for you and your families based on this additional information. Again, we will ask for your express consent to do this (Art 9(2)(a) of the GDPR). If you do not wish for us to use or share this information, this will not affect your ability to access the Early Years service, although our services may be able to better support you and your family's needs with this extra information.

However, there may be certain limited circumstances where we need to use your personal information without your consent. This is where it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency (Art 6(1)(d) GDPR), or it is required by law (for example where there are safeguarding concerns, we would need to contact the Local Authority or the Police) (Art 6(1)(c)).

The personal information we use for families is not always the same - we only collect personal information where it is necessary to do so. The personal information we hold will come directly from you when you contact us or use our services, providing you give consent. When it is deemed necessary we use the following data sources. 

We are provided with information about you and your family from:

• yourself and your family
• education providers e.g. nurseries, schools and colleges
• GPs
• Health Visitors
• Social Care services
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
• Department for Education (DfE)
   

Your data is not shared unless you have given us consent to do so.

On occasions we may need to share data with the Department of Education for the purpose of providing childcare funding or other circumstances where it is necessary.

There may also be times where we need to use your personal information without your consent. This is where it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency, or it is required by law (for example where there are safeguarding concerns, we would need to other services within the Council such as Social Care or the Police).

Our retention schedule sets out how long we keep personal information for.

You can find out more about your rights regarding the personal information used for this service. Your rights apply to the information held by the Council as a data controller, and the information we hold on behalf of the other data controllers.

If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you're unhappy about how we process your information.